SCAG Activity-Based Travel Demand Model Development: Development of SimAGENT

(PI: Kostas Goulias; Co-PIs: Chandra Bhat, Ram Pendyala)

Dr. Bhat serves as a Co-PI for this Southern California Association of Governments funded project, in collaboration with Dr. Kostas Goulias (University of California Santa Barbara – Lead) and Dr. Ram Pendyala (Arizona State University). The ultimate purpose of this project is to develop a transitioning multi-phased approach for a new development path in SCAG’s travel demand forecasting model building. The model here takes advantage of the state of the practice in activity-based approaches, uses in a creative way early achievements in the state-of-the-art, and lays the foundation for the development of a stream of future model improvements. These models are more behaviorally realistic and credible, flexible in their improvement, provide answers to a variety of policy questions at multiple geographical and social scales, and can take advantage of new technologies and methods as they emerge. By June of 2011 we will have developed a “dynamic living map” in GIS that contains models simulating every person and household in the SCAG region to predict all policy relevant variables for transportation decision making and related policies such as housing and urban development. The model proposed here will enable SCAG to move to the forefront of model development in California and the nation to address the increasingly complex environmental policies that by far exceed the capabilities of the usual modeling and simulation techniques.